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Lucy hadn’t been to therapy in what felt like forever.
It had only been about two months, because she had canceled on her appointments from the new year onwards. She didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to face issues she was anything but ready to talk about.
And she really, really didn’t want to be here right now either, but with everything that happened the past few days, she felt like she needed it. The wildfire, hooking up with Tim, doubting herself at work because of her incompetent rookie, but most of all, Tim telling her he loved her.
Oh, how different things probably would have been if she had said it back like she wanted to.
Wanted being the key word here. Because no matter how much she wanted to, because that was how she felt, she knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. Not in that moment. It didn’t matter how much it hurt her. And she didn’t want to think about how much it probably hurt Tim.
He put himself out there over and over again only to be turned down.
Dinner. After they had sex. During the wildfire.
No, really, Lucy was handling her feelings for Tim really well.
Clearly.
“Lucy,” Dr. Klein called out gently, hoping to get through to her this time.
She shook her head lightly, breaking herself free from the trance she had been stuck in. “What?”
“Where’d you go there? What were you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. Almost too fast.
He gave her a look that told her that he really wasn’t buying what she was selling.
“I—It was really nothing,” she tried again, but if growing up with two therapists constantly forcing you to talk about your feelings had taught her anything, she knew she would have to open up about it sooner or later.
“Lucy,” Klein said gently, “it’s not nothing. You called me for an emergency session, right after having canceled your last four appointments.”
Lucy sighed in defeat. “Work got hectic,” she deflected.
That hadn’t been why she canceled on her appointments. She just didn’t know what to tell her therapist. She needed to clear things up with herself before she could fully talk to him about it.
“I’m sure it did, but I don’t think that’s why you canceled. Is it?”
Lucy remained quiet for a little while. All she did was stare down at her moonstone ring and fiddle with it nervously. He was right. It hadn’t been why she canceled her appointments, and the fact that he knew said more than enough about how obvious she made it.
He didn’t push her to admit to the truth, but Lucy did anyway.
“No,” she whispered softly, “it’s not.”
Dr. Klein nodded. “We’ll park that for later, alright? Why did you schedule an emergency meeting, Lucy?”
Lucy pursed her lips and shuffled around in her chair, drumming her fingers on her thigh – a steady rhythm to help her sort out her thoughts.
She needed to start somewhere, because throwing it all out at once seemed like a bad idea.
Tackle things one by one; almost like a to-do list.
“A lot happened, I guess. Um,” she cleared her throat, “I almost died. In the wildfire and it brought back a lot of feelings.”
A lot of different kinds of feelings, too, not just negative ones, surprisingly enough.
“How’s that? What happened during the wildfire? Did it make you think about what happened with Caleb?”
Lucy nodded mutely, because admitting that out loud had never been easy.
Hell, it had taken her a year after it happened for her to finally really tell the full story instead of the bits and pieces she had dropped in the months after the incident.
“So tell me about that. Small steps, Lucy. Whatever you’re ready for.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to talk about it,” she whispered, sounding like a scared little girl.
Maybe that’s what she felt like, too.
Alone. Nobody really in her corner with Jackson dead, Tim hurting and Tamara barely talking to her after what she told her about Seth.
Scared. Scared to face the fact she still loved Tim, scared to die, scared that she was going to lose everything that mattered in her final moments on Earth because she couldn’t accept the fact they could die.
That’s all it had been.
Denial of their death rather than denial of their love.
Because no matter how hard she tried, she could never deny loving Tim Bradford, because it would be like denying one needs oxygen to breathe.
A fish swims in water. You need oxygen to breathe. Lucy loves Tim.
“But avoiding things is what got me in this situation… So I guess I have to. Um, we were under the fire shelter together. We didn’t know the road wasn’t safe, so we needed to find shelter somehow,” she blinked up at the ceiling and pursed her lips to keep herself from crying. “It felt like I… I was back in the barrel. Suffocating, you know? And I asked him if it would work and he said something about the shelter trapping breathable air and it… that’s when it kicked in, I think?”
Her therapist nodded gently, prompting her to continue telling him the full story. Or at least as much as she wanted to tell him.
“But I wasn’t as scared as I had been back then. Because I wasn’t alone. I had Tim there, and somehow, I thought – knew – that meant things would be okay, because I knew that no matter what happened, he wouldn’t leave my side.”
The ‘not again’ she didn’t say lodged itself painfully in her throat – the sole reason she teared up.
Lucy swallowed thickly. Owning up to the fact that Tim was the only reason she hadn’t spiraled completely when she had come close to dying again felt like a huge admission. Almost bigger than the one he had given her when they were under the fire shelter together.
“He told me he loved me.”
Her therapist looked up from his notes at that.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” He asked carefully.
“No. I mean, yes, yes, it is, but not like that.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I didn’t say it back. I know, I know, it sounds horrible, and I do regret it to some extent, but I didn’t… It felt like accepting we were going to die. Like it was our final chance to say it. I didn’t want to accept that, so I didn’t say it. Instead I told him it didn’t matter. And then I cried, just like I told him I was going to and he shielded me from the fire as much as he could because that’s just the kind of guy he is and that’s one of the many reasons why I love him.”
Even she was caught off guard by her admission.
“And after that? In the hospital?”
Lucy shrugged. “I told him about wanting to take the sergeant’s exam. He seemed pretty supportive. And he said the chain of command thing wouldn’t be an issue anymore.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I think it’s good, because he offered to help, didn’t push, and lightly suggested it would be an opening to get back together, which should be a great thing, but it still scares me.”
“What does?”
She didn’t answer for a little. Instead, she fiddled with her ring again, unable to find the words that she was looking for without making it look like her whole self-confidence absolutely tanked.
“That he loves me so much. Even after I turned him down over and over again.”
“You love him just as much as you did before he broke your heart, don’t you? This is the same situation,” Klein offered carefully.
He was wrong, though, Lucy didn’t love him the same.
She loved him more because he was working on himself. Because he was fighting for her – even if it scared her – and trying to be the man she deserved. The man he wanted to be for her.
“He’s working on himself, being better, you know. I think that’s great.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear he’s doing better. Does that make you more inclined to… forgive him?”
Lucy smiled and looked down. “I already forgave him, but it does make… trying to tear my walls down a little easier, I guess. I don’t know. I’m just proud of him for putting in the work.”
Dr Klein smiled hearing her talk about Tim like that. He could tell she had so much love in her heart for him, despite everything that happened.
“So, Lucy, did you want to talk about why you canceled on four appointments in a row?”
She really didn’t, but she supposed she didn’t really have a choice in the matter.
“Um,” Lucy started carefully, biting down on the inside of her lip. “You know how I got promoted at work? My rookie turned out to be a liar who kept lying to get himself out of trouble every time he screwed up. Tim thinks he might even have something to do with us getting trapped in the fire. Well, not just that, but that is part of the reason.”
Dr. Klein nodded slowly, writing down something quickly.
“Alright, I’m sensing there’s more here. What else happened?”
Yeah, shit. She was going to have to be very honest now.
“There’s more. Tim and I slept together. On Valentine’s day. After the charity gala my boss’ wife organized.”
There. Out in the open.
“Okay,” Dr. Klein started carefully, sitting up straighter. He was glad to see she was being upfront about what was bothering her, but he definitely hadn’t been expecting this.
“Yeah,” Lucy whispered, pursing her lips.
Wildfire aside, this was a huge development, and Klein needed to know whether or not this was a development that Lucy was fully behind, or if it was something that could end up screwing up all of their movement.
“Well, last time we talked about Tim, you told me he asked you to stay for dinner, and you declined. Did something happen in between that… made sleeping together a logical next step? Was it something you were initiating? Something he did?”
Lucy looked up at her therapist and shrugged. It had been a combination of things, really, so it was hard to pinpoint what had been the final push that lead to that.
“I think technically I started it. Um… he got hurt at the gala, he was bleeding and I offered to patch him up. Well, our friend Nolan gave us his hotel room because him and his wife were fighting and didn’t need it anymore, so we went there to get him patched up. And when we get to the hotel room, I tell him to take his shirt off, because I need to check for glass. One thing lead to another and…”
Lucy trailed off, clearly thinking back to what happened that night.
Her therapist couldn’t help but chuckle seeing the smile on her face.
“Lucy,” he chided gently, “I lost you there for a second. What happened after that?”
Lucy blinked awake at that, her cheeks heating up. She wasn’t sure if it was because of her therapist catching her in her daydream, or the daydream in question.
“He gave me that look and well, I kissed him. Which escalated pretty fast. I think you can guess what happened after that.”
Her therapist nodded, both in answer to her statement and as an encouragement for her to continue.
“Well, in the morning after that, Tim wanted to talk about what happened. And I shut that idea down.”
“Why is that? You mentioned wanting to have that ‘adult conversation’, he gave you the opportunity to and you turned it down now. What happened?”
Lucy looked up, genuinely blindsided by that for a moment. She really had been very contradictory to herself, clearly.
“I don’t know,” she lied, because she did know exactly why she had been avoiding talking to him about it.
“Lucy.”
“Okay, yes, I do know. I guess us sleeping together really solidified that I’m not over him. And it scares me because I have been trying so hard to convince myself I would be able to move on, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to move on from someone like him. I loved… I love him more than anything, and I’m scared I’ll end up hurt again and won’t be able to recover from it.”
“So you’re preventing yourself from getting hurt? You’re causing yourself pain so he can’t do it to you?”
Fuck. That made it sound really bad.
“I guess. I don’t know. I just… I really want to try again, but I don’t want to end up hurt again. But I keep hurting him because I keep pushing him out and I feel terrible.”
She ran her hand over her head to hide her tears, though she knew it was useless. It was obvious from her shaking shoulder and hitching breaths that she was crying.
“I understand where that guilt comes from. You don’t want to hurt him, obviously, but you want to keep yourself from getting hurt as well. Those two, in your mind right now, can’t co-exist. Either you hurt him, or risk getting hurt yourself.”
He really needed to stop hitting the nail on the head,
Lucy reached for the tissue box and pulled out a few paper towels to dry her tears. “Yeah. And I hate that I hurt him, but I don’t know what else to do. I feel absolutely terrible. If I keep doing this, hurting him, I’ll end up pushing him away before we even get the chance to try again.”
“So you would want that? To try again?”
Lucy nodded without hesitation this time.
“If he’d still want me after all of this, yeah.”
“Are you familiar with the quote ‘we accept the love we think we deserve’?”
Going from talking about her love life to pop culture felt like an emotional whiplash.
“You’re quoting The Perks of being a Wallflower at me?”
Lucy couldn’t have stopped her laugh even if she wanted to. It felt kind of silly to have her therapist quote a heartbreaking line from a devastating romance novel at her, but she supposed he did have a reason for it.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Klein continued, closing his notebook. “What I’m trying to say with that, Lucy, is that you’re likely not accepting Tim’s efforts of showing you he loves you because of unresolved tensions you have with yourself. Especially with you saying ‘if he still wants me after all of this’. He’s shown you that he does, and yet, you still doubt that.”
Okay, well, that was uncalled for. And yet, so incredibly true.
The realization hit her like a truck.
Damn it, he had a point.
There were so many things in her life she hadn’t processed properly, and they were all weighing down on her.
Everything good she had going for herself in her life got ripped away from her.
And that had not been great for her self-worth, clearly.
Because even with Tim spending night and day showing her he would just about sell his kidney to have another shot at loving her, she still doubted that he would want her after this.
After her struggling to deal with it.
Of course he would still want her. He would wait years if he had to.
“Oh,” she uttered, pulling at her sleeves nervously.
“Can I be brutally honest with you for a second?” He waited for her nod before continuing. “You need to be okay with where you are in life right now. You need to be okay with and love this version of yourself instead of mourning what you were before and what you had. If you look at yourself as this ‘lesser’ version of what you were before your life got turned upside down, you will spend so much time thinking down on yourself that it makes you wonder if you need to be better to deserve better.”
Lucy blinked a few times, genuinely so distraught by the fact her therapist had just perfectly put her thoughts into words.
“Better being Tim?” Lucy inquired.
Her therapist shrugged. “I never said that, but if you want to see it that way, then I think that should answer that for you.”
Lucy scoffed softly, because of course he wouldn’t outright tell her he was indeed talking about Tim in this scenario.
She needed to figure that part out on her own apparently.
“I think you, deep down, want to let him in. You’re slowly lowering your guards around him, from what I can tell, and that’s a really big step. One you should be proud of.” Klein continued, smiling genuinely, “But you need to ask yourself if you would rather risk pushing him away permanently or risk the small chance he’ll hurt you again. From what you’ve told me, I can tell Tim loves you a lot. I doubt he would risk losing you again with how hard he’s fighting to get you back.”
Lucy nodded slowly, because that did make a lot of sense.
“I guess so,” she agreed. “I don’t want to lose him.”
Klein nodded in understanding, smiling gently. He needed her to know that feeling like that was perfectly understandable and perfectly okay.
“Then I think you should tell him how you feel. Communicate you still love him, and want to try again. And if you feel like you need more time, tell him that, too, but he deserves clarity, Lucy. Give him that, no matter what your answer is.”
“I want to try again, but I need to be secure in my career first. I love him, I do, but I need to look out for myself first. And after that, once I pass my exam, we can slowly build things back up again.”
It seemed like a fair time frame.
And that way she could show him she was in this just as much as he was. Show him that she was willing to try again if he was willing to wait for her, no matter how long she needed to heal from what happened.
Dr. Klein smiled and nodded. “That’s really good Lucy. You tell him that, and next week, let me know how things went, alright?”
Lucy nodded slowly, managing a genuine smile this time.
“Yeah, I’ll do that. Thank you, I’ll see you next week.”
Sure, things weren’t perfect yet, and she had a lot to work on still, but she was getting there. She was accepting the fact she still loved Tim and it was okay to take that risk.
And he was a risk she would be more than happy to take.
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